Adenium Obesum
by yasuhei
Summary: [Mature]Sabaku no Gaara takes what she wants. She takes their bodies first and then their lives. She brings pain and death in the worst ways she is able, and she knows that as long as she can keep hurting and killing that nothing will ever touch her again
1. Chapter 1

This is an alternative universe fic. Events prior to the stories start have not proceeded as in canon.

This story contains subject matter intended only for a mature audience

This chapter is available with better formatting at Obesum

An alternative universe Naruto fanfic.

By yasuhei

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Chapter One

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She had chosen him on looks alone, and she regretted that now. She should have found some other way to choose her partner and her victim, because really she should have been able to tell how pathetic this one was. He was terrified of her of course, everyone feared her and mother. The fear was gratifying and wonderful; it made mother happy, and it made her feel alive. Most of the time she was numb, feeling nothing except for the aching hunger for violence or others pain. Times like this though, when she was close enough to not just smell the fear but to feel it also, times like this she felt like she had woken from the half-slumber of her mundane existence. She was straddled over him, sitting on his thighs, and she could feel his legs trembling against hers, feel the light dew of clammy sweat that fear was bringing to his skin even in this cool, dark room. It was only when she could feel things like this against her that she was truly sure she even existed.

Sabaku no Gaara needed to feel her prey's fear trembling against her skin.

But terrified or not, this boy was too pathetic. She could feel her mother's displeasure pressing against the back of her mind. The man's fear must have been too great for his mind or his body too handle, because although his fearful gaze kept dropping from Gaara's face to her bare and jutting breasts, his body remained completely impotent. His cock lay lifelessly between his legs, as small and as shrivelled now as it must have been the day he was born. Her own irritation at the fact was far outshone by mother's, but she held that back, because if she allowed mother forward then she would destroy him, and if he wouldn't become hard for her then he didn't deserve a swift death.

She wanted him to feel the uncertainty that she had during her very first time, not knowing whether he liked it or hated it, whether he was joyous or despairing, and afterwards she wanted to look him right in the eyes as he realised that she'd had what she wanted, and now she was going to kill him. She wanted him to know she controlled him down even unto that level, that she had the power to take it from him. Her own first lover had tried to kill her, and that was a gift that she wished to share this man, only she would succeed in the killing. She always succeeded in the killing, no matter what else failed. Only it was so much satisfying when she couldn't make them bed her first.

She stooped closer to him, reaching out slender fingers to caress the side of his beautiful, delicate face. It was his face she had unwisely chosen him for, and although she regretted it immensely right now it was still pretty enough to almost make her smile. It was a work of art, and destroying it would still be satisfying. Nothing beautiful could be allowed to live, nothing at all, eventually, save for her.

She let her forefinger trace his lips as she began to talk to him, quietly and throatily. "You need to make it get hard now, because if you don't, I'm going to make it really hurt when I kill you."

Her hand slipped between his thighs, beginning to caress there too; demandingly but also gently, as if she really did want to bring him nothing but pleasure. It made little difference though it did twitch a time or two, but largely it remained limp and small, too little even for her to wrap her slender fingers around it. Vocalising her demands on him seemed to do little to increase his cooperation. Perhaps it even did the opposite.

As a man, he really was just useless to her.

Inevitably her patience wore through before he came anywhere close to giving her the reaction she desired. Slowly she slid her self higher up his body, so that she could lay her self down upon him and press her stomach and breasts against him while keeping her head high enough to keep watching his eyes. Confusion filled his eyes, for at first he didn't notice the fine particles of sand moving against him, carefully widening his pores and trickling slowly beneath his skin.

"You have failed me"

Her voice was as soft and gentle as the touch of a feather, but he realised what she meant nonetheless. Panic filled his eyes as he felt her sands begin to flex their might within him, and as a beautiful and serene grin spread across Gaara's face. She loved the feeling of another's skin flaying from their body as it pressed against her own, and god how she loved his screams.

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It was just too hard. Naruto had never played the game of Shogi much before, and asking him to learn it right now seemed like a bit too much. Remembering how each of the pieces were supposed to move was a complex enough task for him on its own, but that wasn't all he was supposed to be doing. He and Sasuke were supposed to be devoting the majority of their attention to the goings on around the village - the game of shogi was supposed to be nothing more than cover.

It was alright for Sasuke. There were probably dozens of people who had been willing to teach him to play when he was growing up. As for himself, even if he had been interested... He stomped on that thought, leaving it unfinished. The last thing he needed now was to get more irritated with his surly team-mate, getting constantly crushed in the board games was bad enough. Besides, if he was honest with himself, he was well aware that Sasuke had hardly had a problem free childhood either. He didn't have much right to complain about things being easy for the other boy.

In the end Naruto moved his remaining silver general forward to threaten Sasuke's Bishop. It taken him 5 minutes to decide on that move, whereas Sasuke's follow up came instantly; a knight that Naruto hadn't noticed took the silver general.

It made him want to scream out in frustration, but since they were on a mission he didn't have that luxury, and settled instead for a subdued mutter.

"I still don't see why we couldn't have gone with Kakashi sensei. This is stupid and boring. Nothing's happening here that needs watching for."

His opponent snorted barely seeming to lift his eyes from the board as he replied. "Someone needs to investigate the village, and we aren't with Kakashi because the meeting requires subtlety. Some people on our team still haven't mastered that skill."

Naruto glowered at that, but said nothing. Sasuke sometimes had a point, but why'd he always have to be such a bastard about making them?

"Well even if we have to sit around here, why do we have to play this stupid game?"

They both knew the answer to that one, but Naruto hadn't been able to resist asking anyway. Two young men playing shogi outside a café was good cover. Unremarkable enough not to be particularly well remembered, and gave the perfect reason to sit still for a long time and observe the goings on around them, and listen in to the other diner's conversations. Sasuke gave him the answer his question probably deserved.

"Idiot."

Futher down the street, not too distant from them, Sakura looked like she was having a better time of it than Naruto was. She was back at the vendors cart again, where she had spent most of the morning chatting with the stall operator. In between their chats she'd been visiting the various stores, looking at what the village had to offer, trying on clothes, and listening to the women's gossip. Naruto would much preferred to have her job over his own.

Well almost...

Maybe not the part where an older man was flirting with her, and maybe not the part where she was trying on girls clothes either. Apart from that though, Sakura's job was much better. She didn't have to keep getting her ass kicked at this stupid game at least, and she looked like she was having something approaching fun.

"Why don't we stop playing for a bit, and get something to eat."

Sasuke snorted, but actually lifted his head from the board this time. "How often are you planning on eating today. Already you've..."

He broke off mid sentence as the both felt it, a brief, intense flash of something like killer intent, but different enough to be almost its opposite. Killer intent was a tiny sliver of chakra sharpened down to a razor edge in order to have maximum effect, whereas this was more like water hurled from a bucket - a huge amount of power, but completely without focus. The water had hit Naruto, but that didn't change the fact that most of it had splashed on the wall behind him.

A glance in the direction of the emanation showed only a single girl and for a second he couldn't believe that she might be the cause, for she was dressed in a fine civilian kimono of russet silks, with beautiful flowers picked out upon it in black and yellow thread. A second take proved him wrong however. She didn't stand like a civilian, or walk like one, the set of her face was too full of fury. The cut of her hair was too outlandish also, her ochre locks cropped short and messy around the front of her face, and hanging down her back in dozens of thin and long pony tails. It was striking, rather than elegant, and nowhere near conservative enough for any civilian lady that Naruto had ever met.

There were other clues too, that she was more than her manner of dress implied, and as she walked closer to their table more and more of them became apparent. The dark rings around her eyes that spoke of drug abuse or severe sleep deprivation, the scent of recently spilled blood that wafted over from her direction, the way her hands twitched erratically whenever they were at rest, and lastly, the seams of her kimono. Around her legs the material was forming small bunches along the seams, cloth shifting against cloth in ways that it wasn't supposed to. It wasn't a real seam at all, just a series of temporary, sparsely placed stitched, designed to break at the first violent motion. In a moments notice her kimono could go from something tightly constrictive to being perfectly suited for combat. It was something that no one but a kunoichi would consider wearing.

Her eyes, he realised as she came to stand beside their table, were simmering with barely suppressed anger. Had she realised that they were ninja of a foreign power already? If she wished to call them out now things could become messy quickly. Kakashi's orders were to cause as few ripples as possible, to remain in the background, and do nothing that might cause his contact or their combined quarry to flee. A quick glance at Sasuke confirmed that he seemed every bit as alert as Naruto felt. He too had moved back from the table giving him the room to leap aside should evasion become necessary.

She stood there silently, her eyes flicking between Sasuke and him, taking them in with long, considered looks, as violence boiled slowly behind her eyes. Naruto found that he was on his feet, though he wasn't sure if he'd got there to maintain the semblance of polite courtesy, or to ready himself for a fight. Inside the pit of his stomach he could feel rage beating outwards, a great keening to answer the violence in the girl's eyes with their own - to spill her blood and to lap it up from the ground. But courtesy was not yet beyond him.

"Hey, can we help you or anything?"

But it wasn't Naruto who her eyes settled upon finally, and it wasn't him to whom she spoke.

"You look strong," she paused for a moment, cocking her head to the side like an inquisitive bird, her eyes continuing to burn into Sasuke. "Yes. You will do. Take me to your bed."

She had presence, Naruto had to give her that, and Sasuke was struggling with it. He could see the hairs on his head lifting slightly, and the muscles around his jaw and neck tensing outside of his control, straining even as he tried to remain relaxed. With the aura that she was putting out at him, Naruto was surprised that Sasuke didn't react more strongly, and that when he spoke his voice was still even.

"No. I'm playing a game with my friend."

Her gaze shifted to the shogi board for no more than a second before returning to the dark haired boy.

"You have checkmate in 4 moves. Take me to your bed."

Naruto hadn't realised that the end of the game was so close, but that wasn't he was noticing now. As Sasuke returned her words with a silent and stony refusal the twitching of her hands was increasing in intensity, until she was making truncated clawing gestures in the air besides her hips.

"Your face is pretty, and I want it. Take me to your bed now, or I will crush your friend's bones to dust and when I kill you I will make it hurt worse that anything you can imagine. I won't hurt your face, so I can watch your fear, and so that afterwards I can keep it."

There was little physical sign of danger from the girl, but an aura of violence was oozing out from her so strongly that Naruto could almost taste it. She was ready to kill someone at the next refusal, and he had been team mates with Sasuke for too many years now to dare to believe that he'd give in to any part of her demands. Even if he hadn't been able to guess at his answer, Sasuke's refusal was written plainly across his body, in the tensing of his jaw and shoulders.

There were times when knowing a jerk like Sasuke better than anyone else in the world was a great embarrassment to Naruto, but times like this it could be a life saver. He was already moving by the time Sasuke opened his mouth to say "No." The girl hadn't been lying about trying to hurt him first, because the chair immediately next to where he had been standing shattered in a spray of sawdust.

Not sawdust, Naruto realised as he dodged further away from the girl, but sand. More of the stuff was lifting from the cobbles of the street, mixing together with the yellow mist about the chair and forming into a thick, rope like shape that stood upright, swaying menacingly towards him. A kunai skittered across the cobbles and past him, and he realised that Sasuke must have attacked, though he had seen neither the throw nor the deflection. And then he was dodging, as the rope of sand used the momentary distraction as an opportunity to attack - reaching out towards him, slithering through the air then darting forwards like an attacking snake.

Avoid attracting attention at all costs, Kakashi had ordered them, and Naruto wondered whether he'd think fighting against huge ropes of sand in the middle of the village's main street counted as inconspicuous. Probably not, he'd guess. They needed to take this fight out of the village. They couldn't afford to let too many people notice them, and they certainly couldn't afford to create enough of a disturbance that it might disrupt Kakashi's meeting.

The sand came in low, and he had to leap over it. He would have passed it by with plenty of room to spare, but the rope twisted and corkscrewed, coming back towards him while he was still in midair, almost clipping him before he landed and rolled away. The sand itself came down hard, bursting on the ground like a wave breaking against a cliff, losing cohesion for a moment. It took but a second or two for it to again reform into the rope, but that was time enough to allow Naruto to launch a volley of shuriken towards the girl, and buy Sasuke a chance to move away from her. He too must have realised they needed to get out of here, and it seemed that even the bull-headed Uchiha wasn't stupid enough to let a fight like this endanger the mission.

The girl seemed content enough to stand almost perfectly motionless, allowing the sand to pursue them alone, but as Sasuke and he backed further and further away the attacks from the sand began to become more and more clumsy and inaccurate. Was it that there was a limit on how far she could effectively control the sand, or was it that from so far back she couldn't precisely tell where the sand was in relation to them? Either way, it made the task of dodging it considerably easier, until the girl finally abandoned her position and started stalking after the two of them.

She didn't move fast, but she didn't really need to be able to. Any projectiles they launched towards her were effortlessly deflected by a shield of sand that rose rapidly about her whenever she was attacked, and their own retreat was slowed by the need to dodge the rope of sand as it darted and thrashed back and forth between the two of them. It only got worse when a second rope rose from the scattered sand around them and joined in with the assault.

It was lucky that the village was relatively small, and that they had not been too far from the outskirts, else they might never have made it out to what could charitably be called a forest. The land was so flat here that even this far inland the wide and slow mowing river was something of a tidal estuary. Silt and sand had collected into clusters of thousands of tiny, semi-permanent islands along its west bank, and it was across these that the trees had spread. The trees had caught yet more silt, and now rather than part of the lake it had become something of a salt-water wetlands. Aside from patches of farmland, it was the only thick vegetation for miles. Here they were safe from prying eyes, free to fight to the fullest of their abilities.

But the forest had challenges of its own too. The ground was often waterlogged, almost but not quite a swamp. The trees - thin, spindly, dark things with shockingly bright green foliage that shed crystals of salt as you brushed against them – grew from both the sandy, muddy land, and also from the patches of water itself. The stretches of water varied from being so shallow that you barely got your feet wet, to being deep enough to let you sink to your neck in saltwater and mud. Usually it was possible to splash easily through the water to avoid the chakra cost of running across it, but occasionally they were far deeper than they appeared, leaving you waterlogged and dangerously immobile in the face of attack. Sometimes also, what seemed to be solid land turned out to be silt so loose that your feet sunk right into it. Only the training they had done here earlier with Kakashi-sensei prevented Naruto from making a dozen mistakes that could have easily cost him his life.

The only consolation was that the girl's sand seemed even more wary of the patches of water than Naruto felt, doing its best to stay clear of them, but that still wasn't enough to offset the hindrance to movement from moving through the wetlands. Their ranged attacks were proving hideously ineffective; kunai and shuriken were deflected effortlessly, and though Sasuke's ranged fire jutsu could fuse the sand to glass they weren't enough to break through the girl's defences, and there was plenty enough sand around to replace any that was lost that way. Naruto was sure that if he could stay close to the girl for long enough that he'd be able to break her defences with his Ransengan, and Sasuke could probably manage the same with his Chidori. The problem was getting close enough without being crushed to pulp by the swirling sands. Already two dozen of Naruto's shadow clones had met such a fate, and he was struggling to think up a way around that. From what he'd seen so far assault en masse wasn't going to cut it. She was too dangerous, too powerful. The girl was a monster.

And that was all it took, that last, single mental word. At the mention of a monster Naruto's very own monster, the Kyuubi no Youkou, responded, stirring to full wakefulness.

'Let me fight her.' The back of Naruto's mind bulged with sudden pressure as the Kyuubi tried to communicate, and caused enough of a distraction that one of the sand ropes almost caught him. 'Let me kill it. I will rip it from that pathetic human, and eat its heart.'

Frantically dodging the girl's attacks, it took Naruto a moment to catch up with what the demon inside him was saying. Rip it from her body? Did that mean what he thought it did? Was the girl they were fighting really another Jinchuriki like him? If the power she was displaying really did come from a demon, then it was damn lucky that they had moved away from the village.

He grasped the Kyuubi where it pressed against his mind. The demon was right, Naruto was going to need its power, but he was damned if he was going to let the demon wield it. It clawed at him, thrashing in his mental grip, and howling in rage. Experience had taught Naruto that if he wanted to maintain control over his actions that it was much better to take Kyuubi's power by force than to accept what he offered. He was happy to accept help from Kyuubi, but only after carefully checking the fine print, and never again in the midst of battle. Haku's corpse had taught him that lesson long ago.

Pulling hard on Kyuubi's power, wrapping it around him like a swirling red blanket, Naruto charged the girl headlong. Finally the sand tagged Naruto as he sacrificed defence for attack, and the flowed over and around him, surrounding him like a sheath. But it was too late for the sand now, because now he had leashed his own beast. The sand burst away from him as if caught by the gust of a hurricane, and his right hand filled with its own swirling winds, glowing softly but menacingly blue.

He would end this quickly.

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Chapter One, End.


	2. Chapter 2

This is an alternative universe fic. Events prior to the stories start have not proceeded as in canon.

This story contains subject matter intended only for a mature audience.

This chapter can be found with better formatting at Adenium Obesum  
An alternative universe Naruto fanfic.   
By yasuhei  
------

Chapter Two  
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Gaara had to keep very, very still because she was propped up against a large, cold, stone snake. It was reared up in the air, the middle of its body dead still and vertical allowing her to rest against it as if it were a chair. Above her its head was lashing back and forth angrily, its irritated hissing sounded so very much like the noise her pet sand lizard had made - back before she had to kill it all those years ago. The snake was here for vengeance, she knew, to pay her back on behalf of its old friend the sand lizard; to make her suffer for its death. Didn't it understand though? The lizard had been a gift from her uncle. Didn't the snake realise that she'd had to kill it? It should have realised, but instead it was just hissing and hating her, and Gaara just couldn't work out why it was letting her rest against it anyway.

Slowly the snake's hiss was changing, mutating into a noise still quite sibilant, but no longer anything like her lizard. This noise was dimly familiar too, but not something from her childhood, this was something she'd learnt of more recently. Leaves, it was rustling leaves. For a moment she wondered what that meant, the snake wasn't normally supposed to have leaves after all, before she realised that didn't make any sense. There never had been a snake, just the dream-form of the tree upon which she leant.

The knowledge hit her hard and fast. It felt, she imagined, the same way her victims must have as she crushed them to a pulp with her sands. Her spirit was being squeezed out of her, leaving behind only a dry and harsh panic. She had been asleep. Not the half-sleep she entered to let Shukaku out to fight, where afterwards she remembered everything that happened but in the most confused and twisted way. This had been a true and deep sleep, where her dreams had been real, and except for those last few moments, were unremembered. Her stomach was so twisted that she could feel the acid of its contents being forced up her throat. How much of her soul had mother eaten while she slept, unable to protect her mind and heart?

She waited for mother's voice to break through to her, to tell her that she'd been grazing on her soul, but she waited in vain. Mother wasn't there. Her gloating, goading, demands, and affection were all absent. Her very presence was distant, far back, shrunk down to the very recesses of Gaara's mind. Mother was hiding, was cowering as deep down as she could get.

It made no sense at all.

Memories tumbled forward in messy and unorganised tangles. Two boys of about her age throwing fire, wind and shuriken uselessly against her sands. Those same two seen for the first time as they sat outside a coffee shop and argued across a coffee table. The blond crouched above her, his charka burning as an angry red halo around him and flowing out behind him into violently lashing tails, but his eyes so calm and focussed. Her sand rising up to smother the boy, encasing him for a moment before being thrown away by cyclone of wind that raged around him. She'd felt fear as the blond had injured her for the first time in her life; only now did she realise, with a sense of terrified wonderment, that perhaps she hadn't been the only one whom the blonde had scared. Apparently the awesome power that the blonde had mustered had not only been enough to defeat her, it had also been enough to cow Shukaku herself. Now Mother hid, and Gaara was as alone in her mind as she could remember ever having been.

There were noises other than the rustling of leaves now, and if she pulled hard on her awareness she could actually focus her sluggish mind on them, draw them forwards into actual sounds; into actual words. It took a minute of mustering her concentration as best as she could through the tide of panic that was trying to drown her, but she managed even to hold on to the flittering, bouncing words long enough to hear them as coherent sentences.

"...an idiot. We should kill her now while she's helpless, before we have to fight her again."

The voice was disinterested, negative, but she couldn't quite associate it with anyone yet. It had to be one of the two boys who had defeated her, she supposed, but if that was the case then why hadn't they killed her already, and why did this one have to convince anyone that they should. They had fought, and that was what fighting was for. The stronger killed the weaker; that was its purpose, its goal and objective. She had been the weaker this time, yet she was still not dead.

"No!" The response came with a fierceness that made Gaara tense for an attack that didn't come, "We won't have to fight her again, I can just feel it, and if anything does happen you can leave it to me. I'll handle any problems on my own. Please Sasuke, don't you understand? She's just like me."

A snort of derision demonstrated the other's opinion, but although the tone of his words echoed this, their content was oddly compliant. "Whatever you say. I'm going to patrol, just call me if you have any problems."

To so obviously disagree and yet do it anyway - this one must be afraid of the other. Just like her, the other had said, and in that instant she knew which one he was, and she knew that he was right. She should have seen it during the fight; the blonde's power had been incredible. His attacks not so refined as those of his companion, but filled with a force and fury disproportionate to his small frame. Charka had flown from him like water, like he was a wellspring that tapped the earth's very own soul. How had she not realised that he was Jinchuriki like her; that he too had a demon within him fuelling his fires and sitting at the back of his mind, being parent and protector, as well as tormentor and torturer.

So much more of it made sense now she realized this. He had so suddenly changed from barely avoiding her attacks to overwhelming her so quickly that she hadn't even had the chance to fully let her mother take control of her body. Her mother's fear was understandable too now, for the way he had defeated her, his demon must be powerful indeed. It was no wonder that Shukaku hid back; no doubt the other demon would eat her essence if given the chance, the same way mother ate Gaara's own whenever she let herself fall asleep.

"Hey? Hey? Hey? Come on, open your eyes. I know You're awake now."

Pretence of unconsciousness was impossible now, and Gaara snapped her eyes open. She would rather meet her torture and death head on than pretend to be unawares of it.

The sight that greeted her was not the one she had expected. The blonde boy was crouched down before her, his head at the same level as hers. His grin was dopey, instead of fierce and cruel as she expected. His eyes were soft instead of hard. His appearance was about as far from resolute and commanding as was possible, and he continued to talk, babbling out a stream of unimportant words. He was filling the air with useless pleasantries and chatter, like some useless court bird rather than the powerful monster that she knew he was. Where was the intimidation, the drive to cause fear and pain that she knew must be glowing hot within him.

But he'd told her hadn't he? He'd let her know that he was like her, and now she realised how cunning and cruel that had been. He had to know that she was aware of how he'd hurt and kill her, but his manner was breeding uncertainness and unease within her that was trying to lift the panic back up and out. She couldn't steel herself against the possibility of pain and death anywhere near as well as she would have been able to against the certainty of it. No doubt he hoped that when the pain finally came that it would be all the worse for being unexpected.

She noticed now other little signs that her body had been trying to give her too; it was still demanding and yearning, and the expected aches and pains were missing. He hadn't fucked her yet. No doubt he had been waiting for her to wake up first. Was he going to try and make her think it was sweet and gentle? Was he going to try and make her think that he was doing it because he liked her, before he told her the truth and brutally snuffed out her life?

Suddenly hr eyes were heavy and stinging. Wet. He couldn't do this to her. No. Not so close to the end. She hadn't cried since her Uncle, and she couldn't do this now. She couldn't let him do this to her.

"Hey! Hey! No don't cry, it's not that bad. We won't hurt you or anything." He was waving his hands around frantically, pretending like he was worried rather than feeling acute glee in her discomfort. The fucking bastard. She'd kill him. She'd kill him for his lies, even if for nothing else.

"Just get it over with." Gaara's voice was thick and alien in her own ears. It was shaking like a leaf in a storm, and she wasn't sure if it was hatred or something else entirely that put it outside of her control.

His voice, in contrast, seemed to be totally within his control. His expression and tone of benevolent puzzlement as he spoke seemed so real that she could almost believe it was authentic.

"Get what over with?"

There must have been some small part of her left that still knew what it meant to be the prey instead of the hunter, because Gaara couldn't make herself lift her gaze to his, no matter how hard she tried to. She'd tried so hard, and she'd promised herself and mother that she'd survive, yet still it was going to end like this.

"Fuck me. Fuck me and then kill me. I know you are going to, and I can't stop you now, so just hurry up and get it over with."

He slumped suddenly and rapidly into a crouch before her, moving fast enough and with so little control that it could almost have been a fall. She was still looking away from him, but even with his face hovering at the edge of her vision she could tell that he looked shocked and upset. It was all wrong. He was the one who had tied her up, so what right did he have to sit there looking like she was the one who had him at her mercy.

"I'm not going to do any of that stuff to you."

His voice was whisper quiet, and Gaara uncomfortably realised that this time she actually believed him. The fierceness and anger that had washed out from him in waves during the fight was completely gone now, and instead something far softer and far stranger was emanating from him, lapping gently up against her.

Her earliest memories were all of assassination attempts against her, and of her uncle's embraces. After she'd killed him she'd sworn to herself that she'd never let them hurt her again, that she would return upon the world a thousand-fold the pain it had given her. She would be the one who hurt, used and killed, she would be the giver of pain not the receiver. Every living person was now her enemy - she was already set upon hurting and killing all of them, so it didn't matter what they tried to do to her. They were enemies, not friends. No one again would hurt her the way her uncle had.

She hadn't cried since that night with her uncle, but now, before this boy she couldn't stop them coming on again; silent but fast and heavy. Maybe this strange boy was more sincere in what he was showing her than her uncle had ever been, but that didn't matter. She'd fought hard to remain alive this long, but she didn't want to feel this way. She couldn't bear to. Without her anger and violence she was naked, vulnerable. Nothing.

"Just do it. Just fuck me and kill me."

Her words hung out there between them for an age while sorrow, misery and the hated poison of hope all blossomed and thrived within her. Her whole life could have been waiting here for him to speak. Her whole body was shaking slightly, and she wondered if it was the wasting effects of old age. Perhaps she'd been waiting so long for him that old age would take her soul before he had a chance to do it himself.

"Why? Why do you want me to do that stuff with you, if you think I'm going to kill you?" His voice was as thick, as tremulous as her own had been.

She didn't understand how he could be so weak and so uncertain when he was the one who had the power. He was the predator here. How could he be so weak?

"So that afterwards, when you kill me, it will hurt more than anything else. Don't you want me to suffer?"

He silently half rose from his crouch beside her and moved out of her line of sight. Her eyes remained rooted on the dirt near her feet, but she saw it, and heard his movements only dimly; her attention was primarily occupied by the twisted and painful swelling of her heart. It ached, like the muscle that only stated hurting the day after the battle. Was her numbness deserting her too now? She couldn't let herself start feeling, that way lay nothing but false hope and pain.

Physical contact drew her back outside, an arm pressing lightly against her shoulder, elbow bumping the side of her stomach. He had settled himself on the dirt beside her, managing not to lean back too hard upon her arms that were stretched out around the tree trunk. She waited for him to reach down, to touch her thighs or her breasts, the way her uncle used to, but he didn't move.

After a pause long enough that she had to start breathing again he spoke, quietly, gently.

"I guess it must have been hard growing up with a demon inside you, harder than it was for me maybe. For me, well I was very lonely for a long time, didn't have any friends for a very long time. People did try to kill me a couple of times too, when I was younger, but the guards stopped them before it got really bad. I guess it was quite a bit worse for you, right?"

He paused again, giving her a chance to talk, and she tried. Tried to tell him that there had been dozens of assassins, and that she'd been wrathful not scared, that she hadn't needed anyone to help her then, hadn't wanted interference and still didn't. She tried, but her voice had deserted her too for the moment, leaving her with only a dry, harsh croak.

He gave her a few more moments, and then started up again himself.

"Not everyone's like that though. I guess I always just kept hoping that I'd find people who loved me for who I was, but I was never really sure it could happen, you know? But it can happen. I think everyone will have someone who cares about them before them, everyone in the world, but I also think if you can love first, then maybe its easier to find more of them.

"Hurts though, caring for people. Sakura was really mean to me for ages and ages before she got used to me. Hurt a lot really. I wanted her to like me more than anything back then and she just kept insulting me, but these days I know she'd do nearly anything in her power to try and help me. She cares now whether I live or I die. She even cares if I'm happy or sad.

"There are people out there who want you to remain alive, and who like you, if only just a little bit. I'm sure of it. I've barely met you, and already I know I don't want you to die. I just want the chance to know you better."

Gaara's heart was beating faster now than it had during any fight she'd had in a long time, and inexplicably it was hard to breathe now. Her lungs kept freezing, refusing to contract or expand for seconds at a time. Her voice had made a reappearance however, even if it did come out timid and uncertain, barely more than a whisper.

"How? How can you be so soft and weak now, and yet so powerful when we fought before? Don't you understand that if you want to be strong that you have to fight for yourself? You have to fight to stay alive, and to keep being yourself. You have to kill anyone who might hurt you if you want to survive. Why don't you understand that."

She felt his shrug against her, even though she couldn't see it.

"It doesn't make me weak. Caring is never a weakness; a distraction sometimes maybe, but never a weakness. When you care about people enough your desire to protect them is so much more powerful than the desire to protect yourself ever can be. What would have happened to Sakura, Sasuke and Sensei if I'd let you fully become the demon? I had to protect all of them as well as myself, so I had four times as many reasons to win as you did. Of course I had the power to beat you. For them I couldn't fail. For them I can do things that wouldn't be possible otherwise.

"When I need Kyuubi's power, all I have to do is think of those people who need me to win, and when I'm scared he's going to get loose inside of me I just need to think about who I might hurt if I'm possessed. They are my precious people, and nothing in this world can make me hurt them."

She fumbled for words, but she didn't have any for him. She didn't even have thoughts, let alone coherent sentences. All she had was a slow but steady trickling of unwanted tears.

He shifted against her, leaning back and away, and she felt skin brush her hand. His squeezing hers briefly, warm and soothing, like the first sip of genmaicha at the teahouse.

"Hey, its okay. Things don't get better fast, but they do get better and if you need..."

But then they had had company, and the blonde cut himself short. The dark haired boy, whom first impressions had told her was the cutest of the two, was standing at the edge of the small clearing, his posture agitated.

"Naruto, Sakura sent a message bird. We've got to go. Something's happened to Kakashi."

---

The village wasn't too far at all from the place where they'd waited for the red-haired Jinchuriki to regain consciousness, but for Naruto the trip still seemed to take far too long. Something had happened to Kakashi, Sakura's message had said, but what exactly did that mean. He knew that his sensei was powerful, and trusted in his abilities, but he still couldn't help but worry. Over the years he'd grown close enough to his teacher to almost consider the man family, his respected yet still rather irritating elder brother.

They found his room easily enough, for although they weren't staying with him this time they had still reconoitered the building against the possibility of an emergency. There had always been the possibility that he'd need to summon backup; that was another of the reasons they'd been out on the street in the first place. Naruto deeply hoped that the girl hadn't been sent to deliberately lure them away. That paranoid part of his mind that Kakashi had trained him to develop screamed that she must have been, but his heart was telling him something else; her violence today had been about something entirely different and far more personal. His heart had been wrong before, but this time he was almost certain that that it wasn't; she'd been full of so much anger and sadness.

Sakura had got to the room before them, of course, and was already kneeling beside their teacher, her hands over his stomach and heart, pulsing with soft healing charka. Kakashi himself looked in poor shape. He was exceedingly pale and his breathing was too fast and too shallow. His exposed skin was beading with sweat that Sakura periodically had to wipe away, and he lay on the tatami beside a puddle of vomit that was filling the room with its harsh and unpleasant acidic scent.

"Poison." Sasuke grunted from beside Naruto, and Sakura nodded once in agreement.

The vomit was probably actually a good thing. Kakashi had probably vomited to get the majority of the poison out of his system. The fact that his eyes were open and actually managing to focus on them was positive, and backed by Sakura's ever increasing healing skills it seemed like there was a good chance that he might actually live through the night.

"It seems I was a little too careless." their sensei managed between quick little explosive breaths, and Sakura made a tsking sound at the back of her throat, though it wasn't obvious if she was complaining about the carelessness or the fact he was wasting words in his condition.

Sasuke gave a quiet grunt that meant nothing, and Sakura was too intent upon the healing to talk. It was too quiet here by far for Naruto's tastes. He longed to fill the air with cheerful chatter, but he could think of nothing to say, and even he knew that it would be in poor taste under the situation, so he just waited as patiently as he could while his teacher slowly and painfully linked strained words and sentences together into a briefing for them.

"But for this sort of blind meeting I always have the sharingan active, and so I survived. She was controlling her digestion carefully, and I copied what she was doing physically, guessed what charka pathways she was using. I don't feel she was even using an antidote, I think she just has a talent for poisons. She must be powerful to take poison with me so recklessly, so be careful. Replace your rations before you follow her, keep them well guarded, and wear masks across your faces if you have to fight her.

"She said that she'd caught the wrong fish. That I wasn't what they were looking for, but whatever it was they've got it now. At least one other with her, male from his voice. Heading out of the village. Find and stop them. Whatever they want, don't let them have it."

No please, not even a direct order, and suddenly they were expected to take on an opponent that had already outwitted their teacher. During a battle Naruto could think well enough on his feet to manage to outwit opponents when force alone was not enough, but from the sounds of it their opponent this time was a practitioner of the softer arts of ninjutsu, and that was something entirely different. This wasn't likely to be a matter of tactics, but rather a matter of strategy and of caution, neither of which were his strong points, or Sasuke's either for that matter. Usually Kakashi or Sakura would be there to help do their planning and thinking for them. Maybe, if they were lucky, Sasuke's sharingan would be enough to help them, but then maybe not. It hadn't done enough to help Kakashi, and Naruto knew few others as sly, or as good at avoidance as he was. Naruto wasn't certain that they could succeed this time.

"We will kill them."

The words startled Naruto from his thoughts with their volume and vehemence. The anger was clear in Sasuke's voice, even if it was absent from his face, and Naruto felt his spirits lift. It was times like this, when Sasuke showed how protective of and vengeful over the welfare of his team-mates, that Naruto was able to clearly see how he could like the pompous ass. He'd trust his team-mate and himself. They'd catch them.

But even so, there were things that he had to tell Kakashi before they could safely leave.

"Sensei, there was a girl, a ninja I mean, uh..." He swallowed, suddenly ashamed of his earlier immediate acceptance of the girl now that he was confronted with the danger, "We had to fight her, and we won and captured her but, well uh... she was a jinchuriki too you see, and I felt, uh well I dunno... I let her go though. I untied her when we got the message. I should have brought her back here. Sorry sensei."

Kakashi's eyes went first to Sasuke before turning on him, and Naruto suddenly felt both mortified and grateful as he realised that amount of trust Sasuke had shown him when he acquiesced to Naruto's gut feeling on the girl even against his own instincts.

"Did she have red hair? Fight with sand?"

"Uh sort of red," Naruto confirmed, "but not bright, or orangy or anything, you know. Sort of earthy red. And yeah, she fought with sand."

"Sabaku no Gaara," Naruto could hear the certainness in his teacher's words even through the pain that marred them, "If she is involved with my attacker then that would be a very serious matter, since the sand are supposed to be our allies. Since this is Wind country it's more likely that she ha something to do with what ever fish my attacker was hoping to catch, but be careful. Don't take anything for granted, and if you do find out that she is involved with them somehow then the Hokage needs to know immediately."

And all they needed now was someway to find her.

---

When mother came back she wanted blood.

Gaara's rage kept resurfacing then collapsing in on itself; silver bubbles of directionless hatred that rose from deep inside her then popped without warning and left her to the sadness and uncertainty. She knew rage. It had held her deep within its embrace when nothing else had been willing to and she loved it for it, so she tried onto those precious orbs when they came to her, by they were too elusive today, and far too fragile to touch without damaging. Where was the numbness that usually shrouded her when she wasn't comfortably in the warmth of her bloodlust? Had the blonde sucked that away too, along with the absoluteness of her certainty that every other human deserved pain and death?

Mother wanted blood and it would have soothed Gaara too, but she couldn't give it to her yet, because today she hated Mother too in violent if short lived fits and starts. Mother had fought too hard, and let her survive. She had abandoned Gaara. She'd fought too soft, and let the blonde defeat them. Mother hadn't crushed the blonde to a pulp. Mother hadn't helped her tell the blonde what his kind words were doing to her. It was senseless she realised, everything but the sense of betrayal, but she had no control of her rages now. They were too whimsical, too uncertain.

She hated the blonde too, wanted to obliterate all memories of him, wanted to keep and treasure them forever. If she saw him again she might kill him, or might beg him to talk to her again. She no longer understood what she wanted, what she felt or what she was doing. His words had been the most horrible and the most precious things she had ever heard. All she knew was that she had to go and see her siblings now, had to prove what they felt, but she couldn't decide yet whether she was proving that they hated her or that they cared for her.

She smelt the heavy and sweet scent of blood before she had even opened the front door to the building at which they were staying. Because their mission was one that called for at least a veneer of stealth they had stayed not with the village headman, but instead with a distant cousin of her sensei, Baki. It was his relative's blood she was smelling in the air, a thought that was as heady and intoxicating to her as the smell itself.

The edge of a pool of blood was intruding upon the hallway from the main living room, and Gaara gently slid back the door to find the body one of the nieces, a huge stab evident in her back. She couldn't help but smile at the sight and at the thought of killing the one who had created it, and the sight of a niece put her in mind of the nephews too, the second eldest in particular. He would be out at work with his father, and for a moment she considered the thought of trying to find and take him; her loins were aching for it, but after what had happened that morning the lust was edged with sadness and something that might almost have been shame if the idea hadn't been so ridiculous. Besides, she had to find and kill whoever had attacked her lodgings before she could worry about that.

If she was to look she would doubtlessly find the other useless womenfolk of the household slaughtered too, but no doubt the objective of whoever had done this was the rooms that she and the other's had been staying in, and the faster she went the more likely she was to find them still there. She headed straight up the side stairs, towards the room that Baki's cousin had set aside for her and the others.

She let her hand run along the woodwork as she walked, the cool smooth lacquer on it letting her fingertips glide delicately, easily and almost sensuously along it. It had the hint of roughness too, where the lacquer echoed the textures and grain of the wood below. Finer woodwork was much smoother, but she preferred it like this, because that gentle roughness reminded her of the tiny little bumps along some men's penises.

Blood, the simple touch of wood against her skin, and the promise of violence to come; these things were enough to raise Gaara's spirits, only the smell of spilt blood was growing stronger as she rose up the staircase. She imagined the scent of death rising like hot air and collecting on the ceiling of the second floor, but the truth of course was more worrying. There was more death upstairs. Had the others started without her and killed the intruders already?

The door to the room Baki and Kankuro were using was open and the walls and floor opposite in the short corridor were marked with spots and long splashes of blood, like someone had flung cups-full of blood out of the open doorway. Or like someone had severed the arteries of his opponent and let them squirt, perhaps. If Gaara was very lucky then maybe one or more of the intruders would still be clinging to life, though it was looking less and less likely. Really such a pity, usually it was Gaara who was this messy, the others were normally much cleaner.

She stepped carefully over the worst patches of it and made her way through the door, stopping only to kick a dismembered hand and part of its forearm out of her way. Yes, they'd been messy indeed this time. Blood painted most of the surfaces in here, and there were chunks of body everywhere, but the other's were nowhere in sight.

No, that wasn't quite true. They were everywhere in sight, she realised now as she recognised a dismembered head as belonging to Baki. The flesh and the blood strewn around the room belonged to her male team-mates; her brother Kankuro and her sensei. Of her only female team-mate, her sister Temari, there was no sight. Perhaps she too had been absent when the attack had occurred. Without evidence of her death Gaara had to assume that she still lived, though in what state she could not guess. It was only practical to do so, was it not?

The room itself was in relatively good condition. Aside from the blood and the bodies there was not that much actual damage to the place. One wall was damaged by what could have been Baki's wind blades, but even there the damage was minimal, as if he'd been forced to abandon his usual sequence of attacks part way through. Several of Kankuro's smaller puppets lay collapsed around the room too, not destroyed, just deprived of the one who had been controlling them. Whatever had happened here, it had happened unbelievably fast. Her team was not weak, and yet from the looks of it her brother and teacher had been cut down as if they were nothing. It was enough to make Gaara sick to her stomach; the thought that those she had lived and trained with for so long could die with so little resistance. They hadn't lasted long enough to even cause considerable damage to the room in the fight. If the blood stains were removed and the holes from the few kunai patched, then it would be in near mint condition. None of them had Gaara's power, but surely they could not have been so weak? How could they have let themselves be butchered like this?

"Gaara, is that you?"

The voice that interrupted Gaara from her thoughts was as dry as dust and barely human at all. It came from Kankuro, or part of him at least. His head remained attached to one shoulder and part of the rest of his upper torso. It lay face down, pointing away from her now. The cut that separated it, Gaara found herself absently musing, must have come down diagonally just to the side of his neck and cut across his body, severing both the torso and one arm with the same swing.

"Kankuro, you live?" It was odd really, Gaara's throat was thicker than usual as she spoke, swollen, as if she had a cold.

"Of course. I couldn't let someone kill me as quickly as that. He killed Baki first and so I had time to prepare. I transformed my body into a puppet before his blow killed me. I won't die while I still have charka to maintain the transformation. Temari might be able to heal me before that happens, but they took her. They took her, and I couldn't do anything except lie here in pieces. Some brother I am." He chuckled then, but it was rasping and hollow, and devoid of all mirth.

Would Kankuro's voice still have lacked its usual vibrancy under these circumstances, Gaara wondered, if his lips and larynx had been of flesh right now instead of being made of a puppet's wood and leather? Probably. He seemed to be upset, blaming himself. It made little sense to her. Their sister was gone, but Kankuro still lived. He could still receive medical attention that would save him, and as a puppet Gaara understood that there was no pain. Why was he so upset? Kankuro was stronger than that, wasn't he?

Suddenly the blond haired boy from before was in her mind, his blue eyes worried and his hands frantically waving. He had cared about her, even though she had made herself his enemy, had acted as if her pains were his own. How could they do that? Another unbidden memory followed close upon its heels, of Gaara's nursemaid from her youngest years. 'Someone will always love you, pet,' she had used to say, back before Gaara had killed her by accident. Maybe she had loved her, but Gaara couldn't recall her face or her name, and after her there had only been her uncle...

She couldn't think about this. Not now, not ever. No love. Not her uncle's at least. He was dead now anyway. She loved herself, and that had always been enough, hadn't it?

"I will kill them," she told Kankuro, her voice sounding numb to her own ears, "Should I find you a medic first?"

"The woman told the man not to harm Temari until they'd finished with her. You've got to find her Gaara, before they do finish with her. You can heal me later, when you get back. Temari can do it," he paused, and when he spoke again his voice was authoritative. For the first time that Gaara could remember he didn't seem the least bit afraid of her, "Can you find my left hand? I tagged him with a charka string as he attacked me. If you can find it you can probably follow it to him."

His arm was only a few feet from him, but out of his line of sight. The painted wood of the arm was smooth, and cold to the touch, but the blood that was pooled about it and splattered all over it was still faintly warm. To attach a chakra string even as he was being cut apart, and then to successfully perform the transformation jutsu even after losing so much blood; Gaara wouldn't have credited her brother with such strength.

The string was clutched between now inanimate fingers. It was but the work of a moment to pull it from the wooden clutch and start to let her charka trickle into it, to keep it alive. He must have felt the lessened drain on his own charka system, because as soon as she had established her own control over his string he began to speak again.

"Gaara, if you don't find her quickly you might never get the chance to kill her yourself. You wanted to kill her right?"

Gaara's chest felt tight, compressed, and she struggled to breathe. For a moment she wondered whether she had damaged her lungs during the earlier fight, then it passed and she could speak again.

"I'll find her."

"Goodbye Gaara. Be quick."

He couldn't see her, but she nodded anyway.

------

Chapter Two, End.


End file.
